Colombia Shows Why it’s Urgent, Yet Hard to Disentangle from Fossil Fuels

Few elected leaders in resource-rich developing nations have committed to what Gustavo Petro promised upon entering office in 2022: a fundamental economic restructuring away from gas, oil, and coal extraction. The Colombian president enlisted Vice President Francia Márquez, an environmental activist by background, to jointly architect this ambitious transformation.

Together, they envisioned renewable energy expansion, economic diversification, and grassroots control over power systems replacing the extractive models that dominated Colombia’s past. As Petro nears the end of his single constitutionally permitted tenure, the picture remains decidedly complicated and instructive.

Genuine achievements emerged on renewable energy expansion. Non-hydroelectric renewable capacity jumped from below 2% in 2022 to roughly 15% by 2025, with solar leading substantially. Community energy programs attracted remarkable grassroots enthusiasm, drawing roughly 18,000 interested participants and supporting approximately 1,000 through formal government training initiatives designed for remote and conflict-affected regions.

Yet transforming Colombia’s energy foundation proved far more difficult than anticipated during campaign promises. The government had committed to halting hydraulic fracturing, terminating new permits for oil and natural gas drilling, and withdrawing fuel price supports.

About 380 existing contracts constrained what the administration could accomplish through simple decree or executive action. Without legislative majorities or judicial cooperation, reversing established industrial arrangements remained functionally impossible despite earnest political intentions.

Political obstacles also mounted steadily throughout the term. The Petro coalition could not secure the parliamentary supermajorities needed for binding legislation, while the Constitutional Court regularly invalidated executive orders. Personnel rotations accelerated as cabinet members shifted positions frequently, disrupting policy continuity and planning.

Rather than enacting permanent legal protections, the administration issued temporary directives and geographic restrictions designating zones where mining permits would not be granted. Subsequent governments could effortlessly reverse such provisional measures.

Multiple legislative initiatives attempting to prohibit hydraulic fracturing ultimately collapsed without passage. Proposals eliminating new large-scale coal mining never made it into the final national development strategy and the fossil fuel sector mounted intense lobbying campaigns while economic interests entrenched in extraction resisted transformation efforts.

Furthermore, workers expressed concerns about employment security if production contracted, and local communities felt disconnected from government action addressing their immediate needs.

This struggle resonates across developing economies worldwide. Nations weighing whether to gradually abandon extractive industries or maintain resource extraction face identical challenges: entrenched hydrocarbon interests, institutional resistance preventing rapid change, political fragmentation limiting consensus, and financial dependence on mining and drilling revenue.

Colombia’s experience offers critical lessons about how difficult such transitions remain even under sympathetic leadership. Petro demonstrated that renewable expansion and grassroots energy initiatives can advance despite political headwinds and structural opposition.

However, cementing such progress through binding legal frameworks requires sustained political leverage and legislative power that proved unattainable throughout his presidency. Whether successor administrations maintain Colombia’s renewables trajectory or reverse course will largely determine if these gains survive beyond Petro’s term.

American startups like Frontieras North America Inc. will undoubtedly draw parallels with how the regulatory environment suddenly changed direction once President Biden who favored renewable energy expansion left office and Trump, a fossil-fuel diehard, immediately went about dismantling the systems that his predecessor had put in place to accelerate the country’s shift away from fossil fuels.

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